A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows by Poul Anderson. Chapter 17, 18, 19, 20

outer door. Her tones marched triumphant:

“–I escaped the dishonor intended me by the grace of God and the

decency of this man you see here, Captain Sir Dominic Flandry of his

Majesty’s service. Let me tell what happened from the beginning. Have I

your leave, worthies?”

“Aye!”

Gunshots answered. Screams flew ragged. A blaster bolt flared outside

the chamber.

Flandry’s weapon jumped free. The tiers of the Skupshtina turned into a

yelling scramble. Fifty-odd men pounded through the doorway. Clad like

ordinary Dennitzans, all looked hard and many looked foreign. They bore

firearms.

“Get down, Kossara!” Flandry shouted. Through him ripped: Yes, the enemy

did have an emergency force hidden in a building near the square, and

somebody in this room used a minicom to bring them. The Revolutionary

Committee–they’ll take over, they’ll proclaim her an impostor–

He and Chives were on the dais. She hadn’t flattened herself under the

lectern. She had gone to one knee behind it, sidearm in hand, ready to

snipe. The attackers were deploying around the room. Two dashed by

either side of the clustered, bewildered fishers.

Their blaster beams leaped, convergent on the stand. Its wood exploded

in flame, its horns toppled. Kossara dropped her pistol and fell back.

Chives pounced zigzag. A bolt seared and crashed within centimeters of

him. He ignored it; he was taking aim. The first assassin’s head became

a fireball. The second crumpled, grabbed at the stump of a leg, writhed

and shrieked a short while. Chives reached the next nearest, wrapped his

tail around that man’s neck and squeezed, got an elbow-beaking

single-arm lock on another, hauled him around for a shield and commenced

systematic shooting.

“I say,” he called through the din to Ywodh, “you chaps might pitch in a

bit, don’t you know.”

The steadcaptain bellowed. His slugthrower hissed. A male beside him

harpooned a foeman’s belly. Then heedless of guns, four hundred big

seafarers joined battle.

Flandry knelt by Kossara. From bosom to waist was seared bloody

wreckage. He half raised her. She groped after him with hands and eyes.

“Dominic, darling,” he barely heard, “I wish–” He heard no more.

For an instant he imagined revival, life-support machinery, cloning …

No. He’d never get her to a hospital before the brain was gone beyond

any calling back of the spirit. Never.

He lowered her. I won’t think yet. No time. I’d better get into that

fight. The ychans don’t realize we need a few prisoners.

Dusk fell early in fall. Above the lake smoldered a sunset remnant.

Otherwise blue-black dimness drowned the land. Overhead trembled a few

stars; and had he looked from his office window aloft in the Zamok,

Flandry could have seen city lights, spiderwebs along streets and single

glows from homes. Wind mumbled at the panes.

Finally granted a rest, he sat back from desk and control board, feeling

his chair shape its embrace to his contours. Despite the drugs which

suppressed grief, stimulated metabolism, and thus kept him going,

weariness weighted every cell. He had turned off the fluoros. His

cigarette end shone red. He couldn’t taste the smoke, maybe because the

dark had that effect, maybe because tongue and palate were scorched.

Well, went his clockwork thought, that takes care of the main business.

He had just been in direct conversation with Admiral da Costa. The

Terran commander appeared reasonably well convinced of the good faith of

the provisional government whose master, for all practical purposes,

Flandry had been throughout this afternoon. Tomorrow be would discuss

the Gospodar’s release. And as far as could be gauged, the Dennitzan

people were accepting the fact they had been betrayed. They’d want a

full account, of course, buttressed by evidence; and they wouldn’t

exactly become enthusiastic Imperialists; but the danger of revolution

followed by civil war seemed past.

So maybe tomorrow I can let these chemicals drain out of me, let go my

grip and let in my dead. Tonight the knowledge that there was no more

Kossara reached him only like the wind, an endless voice beyond the

windows. She had been spared that, he believed, had put mourning quite

from her for the last span, being upheld by urgency rather than a need

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